Three young men have been arrested in the death of Santiago Agudelo, who was found dead in the street on Tuesday.

Eugene Peterson 18, Michael Cottrell 20, both of Coral Springs, and Kyle Wilcox 18, of Margate, were arrested late Thursday and are charged with first-degree murder.

According to police, the four men met for a drug deal and what followed was a botched robbery which found Agudelo trying to thwart the robbery by reaching into the car while the driver fled.Read Full Story...

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Tampa, Florida-- With New Year's Eve only days away, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration expects this to be one of the deadliest weeks of the year on the roads.
But now a new weapon is being used in the fight against drunk driving.
It's a change that could make you more likely to be convicted.
"I think it's a great deterrent for people," said Linda Unfried, from Mother's Against Drunk Driving in Hillsborough County.Read Full Story and Video...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The defense for the doctor facing trial for involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson's death will suggest the singer actually killed himself, a prosecutor said during a hearing Wednesday.

"I do think it's clear the defense is operating under the theory that the victim, Michael Jackson, killed himself," said Deputy District Attorney David Walgren.

"They don't want to say it but that's the direction in which they are going."Read Full Story...

An airline passenger arriving from Colombia has been arrested after allegedly swallowing about 30 heroin capsules to act as a drug mule.

Hernando Estupinan-Hernandez's purported plan backfired after stomach pains led him to suspect a capsule had ruptured inside him, officials said. He called for an ambulance and was taken to Broward General Medical Center.

Hernandez, 45, survived and was arrested and charged with trafficking of heroin, a state arrest warrant said. Read Full Story...

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables. Read Full Story...

It's not cool to be the "cool parent" — giving permission to teens to drink at home over the holidays, the Palm Beach County Substance Abuse Coalition said.

The coalition is alerting parents of the problem, said Coalition Director Jeff Kadel, because some of them don't even realize it is one.

"This is the season where alcohol-related accidents go up and you need to monitor who's at your house and what they are consuming," Kadel said.

Motor vehicle crashes remain the No. 1 cause of death among people ages 15 to 20, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In Palm Beach County, records show that alcohol-related crashes reached 1,715 in 2009, up from ,419 in 2005.Read Full Story...

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

After nearly a decade in decline, marijuana is making a strong comeback among high school students, with growing use and softening attitudes about the risk of smoking pot starting in eighth grade. For the first time since 1981, high school seniors reporting they had smoked marijuana in the last 30 days outnumbered those who said they smoked cigarettes.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse on Tuesday issued its 2010 "Monitoring the Future" survey--a yearly look at kids' drug and tobacco use patterns and attitudes. The remarkable crossover of the lines for marijuana use and tobacco use is a victory for public-health campaigns aimed at stamping out cigarette smoking among teens. But the federal office that tracks illicit drug use said it is driven by an uptick in youth marijuana use that is broad-based and likely to continue.Read Full Story...

The country's largest maker of smokeless tobacco has reached a $5 million settlement after being sued by the family of a 42-year-old man who died of mouth cancer, The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 8.

This is the first time a verdict linking smokeless tobacco to wrongful death has been rendered against the tobacco industry. A jury sided with tobacco companies in a lawsuit filed in the 1980s on behalf of a teenaged-user of smokeless tobacco who died of mouth cancer.

This is the first time a verdict linking smokeless tobacco to wrongful death has been rendered against the tobacco industry. Read Full Story...

Two men have been charged with drug trafficking, possession and intent to sell after Delray Beach Police narcotics agents watched four people transporting numerous shoe boxes from their garage into their vehicles for half an hour on Friday.
The agents were executing a search warrant at the residence when they observed Austin Barnett, 31, Morey Pinard, 29, both of Delray Beach, and two others transporting the boxes, according to a police report.
Pinard and another man drove to the Gateway Club Apartment Complex in Boynton Beach and walked into an apartment. When the men walked out of the apartment, officers placed them into custody and searched their car, according to the report.

(AFP) - Mexican authorities have arrested a 14-year-old boy accused of serving as a drug cartel hitman and beheading the victims, the army said Friday.
The youth, identified as Edgar Jimenez and nicknamed "El Ponchis," had been wanted since October, and was arrested at an airport in central Morelos state as he attempted to board a plane to Tijuana, a city at Mexico's border with the United States.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

For the first time in years, Broward and Palm Beach counties do not lead the state in fatal prescription drug overdoses.

The counties still rank high, though, according to the state's latest drug death statistics released this week by medical examiners and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The numbers cover deaths that happened in the first half of this year and show the St. Petersburg area as being Florida's current hot spot for prescription drug overdose deaths.

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The drugs proving to be most lethal locally are the pain killer oxycodone, the main ingredient in such drugs as Roxicodone and OxyContin, and the anti-anxiety medication alprazolam — better known by the brand name Xanax.Read Full Story...

"This new drug crisis rivals the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s," said Bruce Grant, director of the Office of Drug Control. "We must get agencies at all levels of government along with our communities and our medical professionals to step up and take action."

Prescription-drug overdoses killed nearly 1,270 people in Florida during the first half of this year, according to a statewide report released Thursday.

State medical examiners continue to find prescription drugs more often in the bodies of the dead than illicit drugs, documenting the fatal consequences of the nation's prescription-drug epidemic.

Florida lawmakers have decided they want a say over many of the state's rules and regulations, grunt work usually left to state agencies. They think Florida's businesses need protection from bureaucratic Voldemorts and their diabolical regulations.

Makes a great sound bite, until reality bites back. Which it has.

Consider the law passed earlier this year to deal with shady clinics and medical offices whose primary business is dispensing pain medications.Read Full Story...

Women who were physically or sexually abused as children are more likely to abuse alcohol or be alcohol-dependent as adults, according to a recent study.

HealthDay News reported Nov. 22 that researchers used a sample of 3,680 women taken from the 2005 U.S. National Alcohol Survey. They correlated eight measures for past-year and lifetime alcohol use with the women's reports of physical and sexual abuse in childhood.

"The take-home message is across a range of alcohol consumption patterns, child abuse is consistently associated with alcohol abuse," said lead researcher, E. Anne Lown, DrPH, of the Alcohol Research Group. "All of my measures found that association."Read Full Story...

In the first such global study of its kind, the World Health Organization (WHO) has determined that one out of a hundred deaths each year worldwide is caused by secondhand smoke exposure, amounting to about 600,000 deaths a year, Reuters reported Nov. 26.

Overall, 47% of deaths from second-hand smoke occurred in women, 28% in children, and 26% in men.

Researchers led by Dr. Annette Prüss-Üstün of the WHO's Public Health and the Environment Department based their findings on comparative risk assessments from 192 countries, during 2004 -- when data were sufficient to assess exposure to secondhand smoke. Read Full Story...

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has enacted an emergency ban on five synthetic marijuana chemicals, The New York Times reported Nov. 24.

During the temporary ban, the DEA said they will research if the products should remain illegal, controlled substances permanently.

"Synthetic marijuana" -- which had been sold legally as incense under brand names such as "K2" and "Spice" -- is an herb-and-chemical compound that, when smoked, simulates the effects of the tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in marijuana. Read Full Story...

The medical marijuana industry has a new trade organization in Washington, D.C., The New York Times reported Nov. 22.

The National Cannabis Industry Association -- which will be officially launched at a December convention in Denver -- will be the first national-level organization focused on marijuana. It will serve growers and dispensers of medical marijuana, as well as equipment suppliers. Read Full Story...